Demon Zero

by Randall Pine

  “I only took one semester of Latin,” Simon found himself explaining.

  “The spell is in Phoenician,” the demon countered. He scratched the underside of his chin. “The original was, at any rate.”

  Virgil caught Simon moving out of the corner of his eye. He watched as Simon slyly reached a hand into his back pocket and pulled up the edge of the piece of chalk that hid there. Simon looked at Virgil and raised an eyebrow. Virgil nodded; he had gotten the message. They had to see the plan through...which meant Simon would try to bind the demon with the rope while Virgil set to work on the chalk runes that would open the portal to the Anguish Dimension and send the demon back where it belonged. The only problem was that Virgil’s chalk was behind his left ear. With his left hand gripping the candle, he couldn’t reach up and grab the chalk without being obvious. If he had any chance of taking the chalk without the demon seeing, he would have to let go of the candle, or at the very least, he would have to switch hands, and he had no idea if that would break the spell or not. He had a hunch that it might.

  At that point, Simon was realizing that he had an extremely similar problem. He had coiled the rope over his right shoulder, and he couldn’t slip it off without letting go of the candle on his end.

  They looked at each other. They sighed.

  They weren’t so great at planning.

  “Introductions,” the demon said, studying them from his chair in the center of the mostly-empty basement. He placed his free hand on his own chest. “I am Asag, lord of plague, commander of stone.” He bowed his head deeply. “And you?”

  “I’m Vir—” Virgil began, but Simon kicked him with the side of his shoe. “Ow!”

  “Don’t tell him your name!” Simon said, incredulous.

  “Well, he told us his name!”

  “So what?!”

  “So I don’t want to be rude!”

  “He’s a demon!”

  Virgil thought about that for a second. “Well, that’s true.”

  “No need,” the demon Asag said, dismissing them with a wave of his hand. “You are known to me already, Virgil Matter. As are you, Simon Dark.”

  Simon started. “How do you know who we are?”

  But the demon ignored the question. He stood up, and Simon and Virgil each instinctively took a step backward. At his full height, Asag’s head nearly scraped the wooden struts that formed the ceiling overhead. Simon forced himself to stay on his feet, which was no easy task, since his knees had turned to jelly. Virgil watched in open-mouthed awe as the demon stretched, the gray cotton suit straining against his considerable bulk. “I’ll admit, I am curious as to the nature of your visit,” Asag said, and he took a step toward them. Simon gripped the candle tighter, and the flame seemed to grow just a bit larger. Asag noticed it, too; he stopped and tilted his head at the candle, staring at it through the holes in the porcelain baby mask. Then he took a step backward, keeping a safe distance. “Have you come to sacrifice yourselves to me?” he asked, sounding genuinely interested, as if that might be a perfectly good reason for them to be there.

  “We came to send you back to hell!” Virgil cried. He spat at the demon. The mucous landed on Asag’s shoe, where the demon’s heat sizzled it away.

  “What are you doing? You don’t antagonize a demon!” Simon hissed.

  “You have to project confidence, or he won’t respect you,” Virgil whispered back.

  “He’s a lord of plague, not a puppy!”

  “Same rules apply!” Virgil snapped. “PurgeYourEvil.org!”

  Asag cleared his throat, and the two men stopped bickering. “This is a different sort of visit, then,” the demon decided. “I do not wish to be sent back to that realm. As such, your stated purpose puts us at odds.” He motioned toward the stairwell, and the door at the top of the stairs burst open, slamming against the wall of the house. “Your magic is small,” Asag continued, “and you reek of fear. I will allow one of you to leave, but the other shall be a sacrifice unto me.”

  “No way, Baby Mask,” Virgil said, sounding so confident that Simon had to admit he was impressed. “We’re here to see it through.” He turned to Simon and nodded. “Templar needs heroes,” he said.

  Simon sighed. “Apparently it does.”

  They were agreed.

  Then things began to happen very, very quickly.

  Asag spread his shoulders wide, puffing himself up even larger, and lunged forward. The protection spell surrounding the two young men stopped him from getting too close, and the demon halted mid-air as if he had smashed into a glass plate. But the movement was enough to scare Simon, and he was frightened into action. He grabbed the candle with his left hand and let go with his right; mercifully, the spell held. Then he shook the rope down from his shoulder until the loop slid down onto his wrist. He reached into his back pocket with the fingertips of his right hand and grabbed the chalk. He pulled it out, stuck one end in his teeth, and used his free hand to tie the rope around the chalk.

  “What are you doing?” Virgil asked, confused.

  But Simon didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled the knot tight, then handed that end of the rope to Virgil. “Take it!” he said.

  Virgil frowned down at the chalk. “It was in your mouth,” he pointed out.

  “Take it!”

  Virgil did as he was told, making a sour face. Asag was pacing in front of them now, obviously irritated by the strength of their protection spell. Their magic might have been small, but it was sufficient...for now. But there was no way of knowing how long it would hold. Already, the flame had burned through more than half of the candle.

  “Throw it around him,” Simon instructed.

  Virgil blinked. “What?”

  “The rope—throw it around him!”

  “It’s not a boomerang, Simon!”

  “The chalk gives it weight, whip it around him, it’ll come around! Like tether ball!”

  “Oh!” Virgil said, brightening. “Got it!” Without letting go of the candle, he shook out a length of the rope with his right hand, making sure Simon still had a tight hold of the other end. He began to spin the chalk end like a lasso. The demon moved, skirting to his left, trying to get out of reach, but Simon and Virgil instinctively moved as one unit, carrying the protection spell together and blocking the demon’s progress. Virgil sensed his moment, and he let the rope fly. The piece of chalk sailed past Asag, and the rope caught him just above the elbow. The weight of the chalk carried the rope behind him and swung back around the far side of the demon, hitting the floor near Simon’s shoe. The demon tried to dance out of the rope, but Simon lurched down, picked up the chalk, and yanked the rope back up before Asag could step over it.

  Simon exhaled, allowing himself a moment of pride.

  They had lassoed a demon.

  “I’ll bind, you draw!” Simon hollered, taking the end of the rope between his teeth and snatching the other end from Virgil’s right hand. He set to work making a loop, and as he did so, he recited the words of the binding spell. Those words were easy; they were in English. “I bind you; I bind you; I bind you,” he said, his mouth full of rope. The demon groaned like he was in pain. “Virgil!” Simon said with his teeth clenched on the rope. “Draw!”

  “Okay!” Virgil reached up for the chalk that was perched behind his ear, but the angle was awkward, his right hand going to his left ear, and he accidentally pushed the chalk back. It fell from behind his ear and clattered to the ground, breaking into three pieces. He panicked, and he reached down to grab the chalk…but he reached with his left hand, letting go of the candle.

  The protection spell was broken.

  The flame fizzed and sputtered like it might go out. When it got ahold of itself and flared back to life, the purplish hue had drained from it, and the tongue of fire was once again yellow. Simon and Virgil both stared at the candle, stunned. Asag’s express
ion was impossible to read behind the mask…but he stepped forward, bent down, lowered his face to the flame, and blew out the candle.

  “Okay, wait—” Virgil started to plead, holding his hands up in helplessness, but the demon reached out, pressed his mammoth, scaly hand to Virgil’s chest, and whispered something in his ancient language. Virgil felt something warm spread through his chest, and then the air rushed out of him, as if it were being sucked out of his spine by a vacuum cleaner, and he looked at Simon with sad, pleading eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Then there was a popping sound, and just like that, Virgil was gone, sucked away into nothingness.

  “Virgil!” Simon screamed. He dropped the candle and rushed forward, hands outstretched, into the space where his best friend had just been standing. But there was nothing but empty air.

  Simon’s jaw hung open. He turned to face the demon. “What did you do?” he asked, momentarily forgetting his fear. He raised his voice and asked again, louder, more angrily, “What did you do?”

  Asag stepped out of the circle of rope, which lay sadly and unimpressively on the dusty concrete floor. “The next time you attempt a binding spell, I suggest you don’t do it with your mouth full,” he said, advancing on Simon. The light from his hand grew dimmer, the room became darker. “Correct enunciation is important.” Then the demon closed his open palm, and the light was fully extinguished.

  Simon was plunged into darkness with the devil.

  Chapter 8

  Virgil opened his eyes. “Am I dead?” he asked aloud.

  He didn’t receive an answer, which he took as a bad sign. The space around him was dark and blurred, just a mess of black and gray shapes swimming together in the air. But as he blinked, the shapes began to form into sharp curves and lines, and color began to bleed into his vision, and soon the world was reforming before him. The shapes above him were leaves. The thing beyond that was a streetlamp. And the darkness beyond that was sky.

  Virgil sat up, and his head rushed with pain. He squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled sharply through his teeth, placing his hand against his forehead until the pain subsided into a dull throb. He opened his eyes again, and he saw that he was sitting in Mrs. Grunberg’s front yard. Everything looked as it had before: the begonias still dripped with black shadows, the ring of salt was still spread across the grass, and the house was still dark. Actually, the house was too dark. That was something that had changed: the pulsing red light had gone out.

  There was nothing but cold, empty darkness beneath the porch.

  “Simon!” he screamed. He scrambled to his feet, but they were sluggish in responding. His knees buckled as he lurched forward, and he crashed back down to the ground on his chest. He pushed himself back up, and he coaxed his body forward, stumbling across the grass toward the backyard fence. As he shuffled past the dark begonias, something melted forward out of the darkness, and he cried out in surprise, skidding to a stop.

  It was Simon. He had appeared in the side yard as if he had passed straight through the wooden slats of the fence.

  “Simon!” Virgil cried, stumbling forward. He threw an arm around his friend’s shoulder and guided him back toward the front of the house. “Are you okay? What happened?” Simon was as white as a sheet. The color had completely drained from his skin, except for the dark purple circles that had swollen up beneath his eyes. He was unfocused, staring out toward the street, staring at nothing, and he walked with his arms hanging straight down and unmoving at his sides. “Simon? Come on, talk to me,” Virgil said, snapping his fingers in front of Simon’s face.

  After a few snaps, Simon shook his head, like he was clearing something out of it, and he looked at Virgil as if seeing him for the first time. “Oh. Virgil?” he asked, screwing up his face and sounding confused.

  “Yeah, buddy, it’s me. Hey, are you okay?” Virgil pulled Simon out onto the sidewalk, under the streetlight, and inspected him more closely. Simon’s skin was clammy, and his blond hair was matted down with sweat. “What happened?” he asked again. He looked back at the house. The basement was still dark. “Simon, did you—did you kill the demon?”

  Simon stared back at his friend, his eyes huge. And when he spoke again, his voice was an empty, hollow whisper: “He took off the mask.”

  “What?”

  “He…took off the mask.” A single tear spilled over the corner of Simon’s eye. It rolled down his cheek and dripped onto the sidewalk. He turned slowly away from Virgil and began shuffling down the sidewalk, back in the direction of their apartment.

  “Hey!” Virgil said as he ran to catch up. “Hey! Simon! What happened?! Are you okay?” He snapped his fingers in front of Simon’s eyes again, and Simon swatted him away. He didn’t stop walking. Virgil jumped in front of him, grabbed him by the shoulders, and gave him a good shake. “Simon! What happened?!”

  Simon stopped. He looked at Virgil, really looked at him, focusing on his eyes, and he looked startled as if he just realized Virgil was standing there. “Asag put something inside of my head,” he said simply. Then he squirmed out of Virgil’s grasp and continued walking toward home.

  Virgil followed closely behind, prodding him with more questions, but Simon was too shell-shocked to speak, and he stumbled the rest of the way in silence.

  As they rounded the corner, out of sight of old Mrs. Grunberg’s house, the basement windows began to pulse with red light.

  Chapter 9

  “Well, that did not go well,” Virgil said with a frown.

  “No,” Simon sighed, taking a sip of his Dr. Pepper. He swallowed it down. “No, it did not.”

  They were sitting at a table at Squeezy Cheez, poking at pieces of a sausage pizza, neither of them particularly hungry. Their regular table, the one over by the Skee-Ball area, had been claimed by a ten-year-old’s birthday party, and they were forced to sit closer to the register, where the smell of popcorn was stifling. Virgil hated the smell of popcorn. Every few minutes, he shot a glare over toward the children sitting in their place.

  “So what happened to you last night?” Virgil asked, taking a bite of his pizza. The grease dribbled onto his shirt, but he ignored it; he had just come from his shift at the ball bearing plant, and the cheese grease blended in perfectly with the machine grease on his blue, short-sleeved, button-down work shirt. Even the white patch on his chest with “Signal Bearings” embroidered in red letters was covered in grime.

  “Do you ever wash your shirt?” Simon asked.

  Virgil shrugged. “I have before.” He glowered at the children across the room. One of the kids stuck her tongue out at him in response.

  Simon sank back into his plastic chair. He fiddled with his soda cup, flicking it with his fingers. “I don’t know exactly what happened,” he admitted. “I don’t remember much.”

  “That’s kind of weird, right?” Virgil asked with his mouth full. “Aren’t people supposed to remember trauma?”

  “I think people are supposed to bury their trauma.”

  “That doesn’t sound healthy.”

  “No, I don’t mean they’re supposed to do it, I mean, supposedly, that’s what—look, who cares, I’m just saying, I don’t remember much.”

  “What do you remember?” Virgil asked, leaning forward with interest. “You said Asag put something inside your head.”

  “I remember you disappearing when he touched you. I mean, you vanished.” Simon looked at his friend, his eyes wide with the shock of the memory. “You were there, then you were gone, like that.” He punctuated this by snapping his fingers. “I thought you were vaporized. I thought you were dead.”

  “That makes two of us,” Virgil muttered. “I was in the basement, then I was in Grunberg’s front yard, and there was just a whole lot of nothing in-between.”

  “Why would he just…send you away like that?” Simon wondered.

  Virgil shrugged. “Demons gott
a demon,” he said, chomping down on his pizza.

  Simon snorted. He placed his palms flat on the table. “After that,” he said, “things get sort of fuzzy. He told me to speak more clearly when I say my spells. I do remember that.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t want to say anything, but you really shouldn’t try to do magic with your mouth full,” Virgil said with his mouth full.

  Simon pressed on, ignoring him. “Then he put out the light. And…” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “And then I don’t remember anything after that. I don’t even remember getting home.”

  Virgil raised an eyebrow as he sipped on his Orange Slice. “Really? Nothing?”

  “Nothing from when it went dark until I woke up this morning.”

  “Huh. That’s weird.”

  “Why?”

  “Because last night, when you…I don’t know, emerged from the basement, when I found you near the side of the house, you said something weird. You said, ‘He took off the mask.’”

  Simon wrinkled his nose in confusion. “I did?”

  “Yeah. You were as white as this,” Virgil said, holding up his wadded napkin. Then he looked down at it. “Well. Whiter than this. As white as this was before it got pizza all over it.” He tossed the napkin onto the table in disgust.

  “I don’t remember any of it,” Simon shrugged. “Really.”

  Virgil shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well…do you think he…did anything to you?”

  “What do you mean, ‘anything’? Like what?”

  “Like I don’t know, like…maybe he…put something inside of you?”

  Simon narrowed his eyes. “Why are you asking me that?”